I weigh in about vaccines

Posted on Sunday, February 8, 2015 by Rebecca

Back in 1985, I was somewhat more educated about vaccines than the typical parent, having taken a college course on the history of virus diseases — a fascinating and hugely informative course taught by an amazing man whose many accomplishments in the field of medicine included being the head of the CDC’s virology division. So, while I was unquestioningly pro-vaccine to the point that it never dawned on me not to vaccinate, I knew there were things about virus diseases that were yet mysterious and unexplainable. For instance, the two brilliant doctors and researchers who taught my course, experts in the fields of virology and epidemiology, could not entirely explain why certain diseases had obviously been on the decline before vaccines against them were introduced, or why the polio rates in an unvaccinated populace outside the U.S. dropped at the same time and almost the same rate as the newly vaccinated U.S. population.

None of that, for a moment, caused me to question the wisdom of full vaccination against any and all diseases. In all my reading and study, nothing had made me think that vaccines were anything but entirely safe.

Then my infant son experienced syncope following his routine vaccination. I recall holding his limp, seemingly lifeless body in my arms, his breathing so shallow that I could not detect it, and screaming for the doctor, the nurse — anyone — to help. I thought my son was dead.

You don’t get over that quickly.

My son was not dead. The nurse, impatient with my state of shock, and unfamiliar with information like this, told me my son was obviously “shutting down from overstimulation” — even though he was long past the newborn stage and never reacted like that to anything else. She refused to summon the doctor and insisted that I leave immediately.

Still in shock, and not knowing what else to do, I left.

To make a long story short, my infant son — who usually slept very little during the day — remained in what I can only describe as a coma-like state for over 8 hours. I could not rouse him. Repeated calls to the doctor’s office finally resulted in my being told by the nurses that I was an overwrought new mother and should enjoy the “break from my son” for as long as it lasted, and to stop calling them. It was that day that I discovered we had a family history of “bad reactions” to the pertussis vaccine, which prompted me — once my son seemed back to normal — to head off to the UCLA Biomed Library to try to find out what on earth had happened to him.

This was before The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, and my son’s frightening reaction was not reported to VAERS. The CDC admits this database is incomplete, even today. How incomplete is anyone’s guess.

In the next two to three years, I read everything I could lay my hands on about vaccines. I questioned medical professionals. I attended seminars. I did all the study and research that I could.

What I discovered during my research was that my son’s reaction, while sounding trivial — oh, he just slept deeply all day — was actually considered serious because it is usually accompanied by neurological damage. Two years later, another pediatrician told me emphatically, “I cannot in good conscience give any member of your family the pertussis vaccine.”

“You might not be so lucky next time,” more than one doctor told me.

I decided to take their medical advice. Unfortunately, I foolishly mentioned this to some other mothers — and that’s when I discovered just how angry, hysterical, and irrationally selfish the radical fringe of the most extremely pro-vaccine parents can get. I discovered that the ones urging me the most vociferously to “Do some research!” had never actually done any of their own, and were totally unfamiliar with what I considered the most basic knowledge about vaccines. When one distraught woman went so far as to scream in my face that she didn’t care if all my children died from vaccines just as long as hers weren’t exposed to whooping cough, I decided this topic was too emotionally loaded to discuss rationally with some people, and it was probably best to keep my mouth shut in the future.

The current hysteria reminds me of those days, only now it seems so much more widespread and virulent. I would recommend parents, and all those concerned about measles, to read this information from the CDC. If you are going to lambaste people for their medical decisions, or clamor for the government to take draconian measures against non-vaccinators, at the very least you should acquire some basic knowledge and make sure your own vaccinations are up to date.

If you think every person who decides to forego a particular vaccine is a dangerously ignorant wacko anti-vaxxer, I would like you to know:

Some of us felt very much like you until something scary happened to one of our children
Some of us are not at all “anti-vaccine”, but carefully consider the merits of each one, weighing the risks and benefits
Some of us have done a lot of research and study in order to make the difficult decisions we have made
Some of us are following medical advice
Some of us will forego a particular vaccine for reasons that have nothing to do with autism
Some of us are so concerned about people with compromised immune systems that we do our best to prevent their exposure to people who are not only possibly ill, but might have recently received a live vaccine (and, contrary to what you may have been told, the measles vaccine in the U.S. is a live vaccine)
Some of us understand that no vaccine is 100% effective, which is why we might get argumentative when you insist your fully vaccinated — but obviously sick — child could not possibly have an illness he was vaccinated against, even if his symptoms seem glaringly obvious to everyone else. When we point this out, we aren’t on an anti-vax tear; we just don’t want your kid infecting other kids, vaccinated or not. Besides, if you’re right that the cough that sounds so alarmingly whooping-like isn’t pertussis, or that what your child is covered with is some entirely different pox, then I really don’t want to be exposed to whatever it is your kid has — so please keep him/her home, OK?
Some of us understand that not all diseases have a vaccine. We also understand that what might be a “simple cold” or “I hope it’s not the flu, haha” to one person might be quite serious to someone else. That’s why some of us might seem a bit “paranoid” about germs, or overly concerned with maintaining healthy immune systems.
We have a wide variety of reasons for choosing against one vaccine, several vaccines, or all vaccines. Don’t assume you know those reasons, or that we are all misguided, ignorant zealouts out to infect your children…after all, I try not to assume all stridently vocal pro-vaccinators are misguided, ignorant zealouts who — because they can’t be bothered to make informed decisions for their children and themselves — want to take away my right to do so.

Note: Since my youngest is almost 18, I no longer have a dog in this fight. And, frankly, that’s a relief.

Depression

Posted on Friday, February 6, 2015 by Rebecca

I posted this on Facebook this morning:

When I was in the worst grips of depression, this verse seemed an unrealistic platitude, or a promise given to those Christians far more deserving than I. “Where is my power, love, and sound mind?” I would ask desperately.

If I could have “snapped out of it”, believe me, I would have. If people quoting verses at me would have fixed me, my problems would have vanished instantly. Unless you have ever suffered true depression, you have no idea how tight and insidious its grip can be.

God’s answers for me are often neither easy nor quick. Some I may never receive in this lifetime. But I did come to realize that my bleak depression was never from Him, and that He had in fact given me those good things promised in this verse — but they were buried and hidden under the dark fog of despair.

My road to healing was not easy. But it has been so worth it. I am so thankful that God always kept a spark of hope alive in my heart, that He never let go of me, and that He finally brought me out of the darkness.

I was wrong about date nights

Posted on Tuesday, February 3, 2015 by Rebecca

It’s not that I was entirely wrong. I still don’t believe that couples need to leave their kids with babysitters once a week, lest their marriages be doomed. Nor do I think we should be trying to recapture the early, pre-marriage days of our relationship, when we were not only younger but far more immature and selfish, didn’t know each other as well, and hopefully — if we followed Biblical morality — weren’t having sex. Why go backwards?

However, there are some things I was seriously wrong about, and those are things that the best of the “date night” advocates are trying to get at. I’m addressing this to the wives, because…well, because I am one.

1. Intimacy is important, and it doesn’t just happen. You need to make room for it. By this, I mean real intimacy; I’m not just using the word as a code or euphemism for sex. It takes time, and a willingness to be open and vulnerable with each other, to build and maintain the level of intimacy that should be found in a truly healthy marriage. Otherwise it’s too easy to become harried co-parents passing each other like two ships in the night, whose conversations are mostly about babies and business.

2. Husbands aren’t just being immature and selfish, or child-haters, if they miss the “fun” person we used to be, or that they hoped we’d be, when we married. Unless you married a really irresponsible jerk, he doesn’t want to quit his job, sell the kids to the gypsies, and run off with you on some crazy adventure. But he might want you to play with him — however that might like look for the both of you — and to be his recreational companion once in a while. He might want to know that he can still make you laugh, that your life is not all drudgery and duty, and that there is still a fun sparkle in your eyes especially for him to enjoy. He might just want to see you happy, and to know it’s because of him.

3. Some husbands get lonely, and rely on our friendship more than we realize. This can be confusing if your husband’s friendship style is waaaaay different than yours. I was shocked to read a study showing that the majority of happily married men considered their wives their best friends, while the wives usually considered someone else their best friends. As a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom whose husband was usually busily involved in his business and in church ministry plus meeting weekly with a prayer partner for most of our marriage, it was easy for me to think my husband’s life was filled with people and rich relationships while I was isolated and starved for adult conversation. Yes, my husband was surrounded by people all day, but that did not meet his deeper needs for relationship. We would have both done things differently if we had realized that.

4. Marriage should be our priority human relationship. After all, we took vows with this dude. That doesn’t mean we sacrifice our children on the altar of marriage. We don’t have to do silly, rude things like couch time to let everyone know they are second, third, or fourth fiddle to us. It doesn’t mean we should spend more time with our husbands than our children, or that we can’t have a girls’ night out, or that we must not ever do anything without our husbands. Marriage should never be an idol. Neither should any husband. But it’s an extremely important relationship, not just because of the vows, but because it’s supposed to be a living analogy of Christ and the Church. So we better treat our marriage with respect (and the same goes for the children produced by it).

5. Marriage books are full of nonsense. But I already knew that. Of course, they are not all 100% rubbish, but we would do well to remember a few important things: a) most, if not all, of them were written by people who have never met you or your husband; b) most, if not all, of them are written by people you would never, ever want to be married to; c) authors of marriage books have their own issues and baggage just like everyone else; d) the more authoritative and dogmatic the author, the quicker you should toss his/her book on the scrap heap; e) too many marriage books are written by middle or upper class Americans who assume we all have enough discretionary income to spend on babysitters, romantic dinners, fancy lingerie, hotel weekends, and vacations without the kids; f) just as God created us all different and doesn’t want us all to look and act exactly alike, He doesn’t want all marriages to look and act exactly alike; g) marriage is first and foremost about becoming one — not erasing anyone, but becoming a whole that is greater than the individual parts — so don’t take anyone seriously who starts telling you marriage is like the military, or like a business, or like a sports team, or like any other wacky thing God never intended it to be.

6. You are neither a sinner nor a failure if you need time to relax and rejuvenate. Even Jesus withdrew for times with His Father. We need intimacy with our Heavenly Father. We need intimacy with our husbands, however that may look in each of our marriages. And we need a certain amount of intimacy with good friends. Those things are important and valuable…and we don’t need to pretend we are supermoms who are above human needs and desires. We need each other…and our husbands need us.

7. Marriages have seasons, and what works in one may not work in another. We need to cut ourselves some slack. Alone time with our husbands will not be our major priority when we have a newborn, nor should it. Going broke hiring babysitters, or stressing out over what mayhem the kids are engaging in without us, is not a marriage-building exercise, no matter what anyone tries to tell you.

8. We need to do what works for us. Even though I rejected the notion that my marriage would shrivel up and die if I didn’t jump through all the stressful, exhausting hoops a weekly date night would have required when the kids were little, I still thought we needed a weekly something. So I tried date nights at home and a bunch of other ideas I found in books or online, and they all went over like a lead balloon. In my misguided zeal, I forgot to do the most important thing. It never dawned on me to say to my husband, “Honey, I want us to have the best marriage possible, and to become closer to each other. What kind of things do you think would nurture and strengthen our marriage? And what kind of things would you enjoy doing together?”

God, love, and difficult questions

Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2015 by Rebecca

Back in July, I wrote this:

This is not a mature, adult faith. It’s a mess, a broken jumble of confusion. But I’m posting it here because it’s real. Jacob wrestled with God. David asked Him tough questions, and lamented and wailed. The Bible is full of people struggling with God, people who didn’t have neat and tidy answers, people that we would feel uncomfortable having around if they showed up at our next small group meeting.

Way back when I was 11 years old, I threw two troubling questions at God, and He answered. Now I feel as if that wasn’t a lifetime ago, as if I’m still Little Me, all childish and earnest and troubled, desperate to believe and trust, desperate for answers that satisfy.

He’s the same God Who answered a crying little girl…the same God Who brought peace to a little girl who needed to cling to hope and beauty…He’s that personal, intimate God…Abba…Daddy…

It scares me. He scares me. Because I know that encountering His love never leaves me unscathed. Never. I will be undone. My heart will be broken…in the most beautiful and healing way. Who will I turn out to be, when I see myself through the loving eyes of my Creator?

I want to run…far far away from a God I cannot escape, at the same time that I want to throw myself into His everlasting arms.

So I stand on what feels like a mountain top, yelling to the Heavens, “Who am I? And You — who are You? What kind of God could possibly love me? And how will I survive Your unfathomable, wild, fierce, tender love?”

I still don’t have all the answers. Gradually I am learning to embrace the mystery. I am learning to want God more than I want answers, more than I want everything resolved and tidy and sensible, more even than I want healing and recovery.

Funny thing, though. Once I started focusing more on Him, and less on overcoming my issues, the more my healing has progressed. That verse I learned as a kid about, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you” — is this an example of that?

I no longer expect God to make perfect sense to my puny little brain. Frankly, I don’t want that kind of God — He would be too simple, too puny, too small. I want a real God, one worthy of my worship because He is so far above me…even if that means His ways don’t always make sense to me.

It’s been quite a ride, these last months of 2014, and the first month of 2015. I hope to be blogging about at least some of it. Quite a ride. Things have been neither easy nor serene. I have not been left unscathed; my heart is being broken in new ways, and I’m still trying to figure out who I am. But I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

Redeeming the day

Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 by Rebecca

Yesterday, I ended my post with these words:

There was a time when I insisted to my therapist that my rape was so terrible, so dark and ugly, that there was nothing about it that God could possibly redeem. He proved me wrong…but that’s best left for future posts.

Almost immediately, the following came to mind. It’s something I wrote in 2009, after I’d been in therapy a few months. I’ve only done a few minor tweaks for readability, leaving the rest alone. It’s kinda raw. But it’s the raw and broken things that need redeeming, not the clean and pretty ones.

*****

During my therapy session today, Donny asked about the anniversary of the rape, and I told him I knew it was in August, but didn’t know the date. For some reason, after I got home, this started really bothering me. I went online to find an August 1981 calendar, and I started plugging different events into different days and finally, by process of elimination, I figured out that August 23 had to be the date.

And then I sat there, thinking, “Damn. I figured it out. But I don’t quite know what to think about it, or how to feel.” Then I realized that I was still being raped on August 24…the day that later became my wedding date. I regretted my figuring out the date, because I felt as if my wedding anniversary was now forever ruined for me. My imagination went into overdrive. I became convinced that, instead of celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary, I’d be hiding in bed, having flashbacks, reliving that horrible day and the next day in awful, nightmarish detail.

So I posted to my online support group and Matt responded, “Well, think of this: for many years you did not know it was an anniversary. Which proves the date is not forever ruined, because you have had many August 23rd’s since your rape. And that endows you with a whole lot of post-rape August 23rd memories to recall, which are clean of any such traumatic triggers.”

That made sense.

I decided to quite whining to God, “How could you let me pick August 24 as my wedding date? And why didn’t the church let us have our first choice? Why? Why? Why?”

Then I thought, “What a coincidence…what are the chances that I would get married on that day?” But then it dawned on me — how cool, how redemptive, how absolutely victorious is it that, on the 3rd anniversary of my rape, I was having a rehearsal dinner with most of my favorite people in the world? The ugliness of the rape was the furthest thing from my mind that night. Three years after Lou and Carl finally stopped raping me, I was asleep in bed, dreaming happy dreams of marriage. Three years after that horrible shower, I was getting ready for my wedding day. Three years after sticking a gun in my mouth, feeling broken and ruined and filthy, I was walking down the aisle in a beautiful white dress that had been lovingly sewn for me. I remember that, during the wedding, I had kept thinking, “God is good”. I felt like I was basking in His love. And I actually felt beautiful.

God is good. I had no idea how good. He really did give me beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning. And He couldn’t have told me that in a more obvious way.

This August 24th will be my 25th wedding anniversary. It will also be the 28th anniversary of when they stopped raping me…the 28th anniversary of the day that I cleaned myself up and went to my first day at a new job, trying to pretend nothing had happened, the 28th anniversary of the day that I didn’t pull the trigger, the 28th anniversary of the day that I took my first steps towards being a survivor.

The “coincidence” of those dates, of forgetting the date of my rape until figuring it out all these years later — it all seems to me like a beautiful, redemptive story that God has made out of the ugliest days of my life. I feel as if He’s just given me the best 25th wedding anniversary I could think of getting.

*****

One of the things we, as survivors, often tell ourselves and each other is that the process of healing and recovery is not a smooth and constant one. There are setbacks along the way. That is the nature of healing in general, but I think that there can also be something else going on when it comes to recovery from sexual trauma. Based on what I have read, and my discussions with people experienced in the field of psychological trauma, I have come to believe that sexual trauma is unique in the damage it does to the human soul. Because of this, I also believe that the process of recovery is a sort of spiritual turf war being waged over one’s soul.

In retrospect, this seems obvious to me. 2009 was one of the most difficult years of my life. A tragedy brought me into therapy. At the same time, my husband almost died. Our entire family walked through some very deep waters. I experienced anguishing dark nights of the soul. All of that almost destroyed me.

In the midst of all that, God brought healing and moments of redemption. I wish I had trusted Him more and failed Him less. But despite my stumbling about, the fighting and wrestling I mentioned in my last post, and moments of absolute rebellion, He was faithful. He never gave up on me, his all-too-prone-to-wander prodigal daughter. No matter what, He always loves me back home again.